Living with the Land
Living with the Land (originally Listen to the Land) is a ride located within The Land pavilion in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. It is a slow-moving boat ride, which is part dark-ride and part greenhouse tour. The focus on the ride is on agriculture, especially new technology to make agriculture more efficient and environmentally friendly. Development Living with the Land was originally developed as a suspended dark ride called Blueprints of Nature. Traveling underground to a carousel theater preshow, guests would be introduced to the Landkeeper, the attraction's host. From there, the Landkeeper would take guests on a hot-air balloon trip through the four seasons and a series of simulated biomes located in greenhouses at the front of the pavilion. These plans would be scaled back when Kraft came aboard as a sponsor and the attraction would become a boat ride. The greenhouse portions of the pavilion would become focused on showcasing new agricultural techniques, while the dark ride portion would become the simulated biome portion. Opening with Epcot as Listen to the Land, the attraction originally featured a song of the same name and an opening sequence called "Symphony of the Seed", which was a whimsical look at how plants grow with massive twisted roots designed by Disney background artist Walter Peregoy. This sequence would be replaced by a thunderstorm scene when the attraction was retooled and renamed in 1994. Summary The dark-ride portion of the attraction opens with a scene of a deciduous forest in the middle of a thunderstorm, illustrating how the forces that shape the land can appear destructive to us. The boat then sails through artificial biomes representing a tropical rainforest, a desert and the American prairie. Some of the Audio-Animatronic figures in this section were originally created for the never-built Magic Kingdom attraction, Western River Expedition. The biomes feature sound and lighting effects, in addition to heat, wind and mist, to simulate real conditions. The boats float through a small theater that illustrates the relationship between humans and the environment, and the ways that we have been modifying the land to better serve our purposes. The second part of the attraction takes place in The Land's "Living Laboratory", which showcases ideas about the future of agriculture. There are five distinct areas of the "living laboratory" which includes the Tropic Greenhouse, Aquacell, Temperate Greenhouse, String Greenhouse, and the Creative Greenhouse. It also contains the Biotechnology Lab and the Integrated Pest Management Lab. All of the plants in this section are grown through various methods of hydroponics. Plants are grown in sand, perlite, coconut coir and rockwool. Timeline *October 1, 1982 - Listen to the Land opens *September 27, 1993 - Listen to the Land closes, original Symphony of the Seed opening scene, song, and ending are removed. *December 10, 1993 - Living with the Land reopens with new "thunderstorm" opening scene, musical score, and ending. *2004 - Disney Fastpass option added. *August 20, 2006 - Cast members no longer narrate the second portion of the ride. Instead an automatic audio spiel featuring the voice of Mike Brassell (also the narrator for the Tomorrowland Transit Authority at the Magic Kingdom as of October 2009) plays at each greenhouse scene, activated by RFID tags attached to the flume wall. The spiel is updated periodically as the greenhouses are replanted. *August 2, 2009 - The attraction closed for refurbishment, new exit unload safety bar added. New boats were ordered for the attraction but they were the wrong size and did not fit into the flume. *October 4, 2009 - Living with the Land reopens again *January 2010 - Living with the Land closes to change load area, dispatch console, and add the 6 new ADA boats and the 12 new ten row boats. Also to repaint certain show scenes and reactivate the rainforest's rain scene. *February 2010 - Living with the Land reopens again. *August 10, 2019 - Film in the Barn Theater updated See also *List of attractions equipped with Disney's Fastpass Category:Epcot attractions Category:Water rides Category:Kingdom Keepers locations Category:Future World Category:Disney's Fastpass equipped attractions Category:The Land Category:World Nature